I reported Google appears to be testing a new click tracking method in the search results. In the past, Google selectively tracked clicks by appending tracking URLs to the search results. Now, it appears that those tracking URLs are done through JavaScript and are virtually invisible to the end user.
Here is a sample of the code in the search results to track the clicks:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/” class=l onmousedown=”return rwt(this,”,”,’res’,’4′, ‘AFQjCNG5-9Jej-ukVeakTgwonqt2narbYg’,'&sig2=4Lwo00y104At7P9SCT7uXA’)”>
I do not know why this was changed or if there is any significance to it. There is discussion around the change at WebmasterWorld Forums now.
Related Topics: Google: Web Search
This isn’t new, it’s been happening for a long, long time.
Actually, now I look, there’s link in the WMW forum thread to a 2003 thread discussing this.